


Feed the Flames

by peloquine



Series: crumbling worlds behind [1]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Vengeance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peloquine/pseuds/peloquine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chadara lives and eventually learns to be free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feed the Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://peloquine.tumblr.com/post/52139460859/aeternium-au-in-which-donar-wasnt-an-asshole) and [this](http://peloquine.tumblr.com/post/52140808808/vrabia-aeternium-au-in-which-donar-wasnt-an).

Freedom, Chadara thinks, is a word she has tired of hearing. Freedom is for the men, freedom is for those whose hands are hardened by and for the use of steel – freedom is not for her. She gained nothing when the rebels killed her master and struck her incorporeal shackles – she was cast into freedom as she was into slavery: an unsuspecting spectator turned from slave to rebel due to chance and circumstance.

After all, the difference is all but indiscernible, she thinks as she spreads her thighs for Donar and he presses inside, grunts in her ear. Chadara is skilled in the art of illusion, knows how to smile and move and please like every slave, but this time she is so very tired of the charade.

Donar kisses her, cradles her hips in his hands to thrust deeper. Pleasure swells inside of her, distant like the ache of a half-healed bruise. He is a handsome man, and she thinks that in another life she where she did not need him like she does now she could have taken him to her thighs because she wanted to and not out of necessity.

When he is done, he rolls of her, spreads his cloak out over both of them and falls asleep. His armour is spread out on the floor around them, his axe right by her. The steel glints in the last rays of the sun that is disappearing beneath the temple walls and she reaches her hand out, draws her thumb along its sharp edge, wondering at its lethal magic and the power it brings its bearer.

- 

Despite his rejection of her, Donar finds himself again to her bed but a handful of nights later. Perhaps it is because of the smiles she shared with one of the Germans; men are such silly creatures, always looking to conquer what to them seems to belong to another.

 _Am I not free?_ she wants to ask him mockingly. _Who are you to lay claim to me?_ But she does not. Instead she shoves him away, lightly. He interprets the action as playful and moves to kiss her anew. Again she pushes him away.

He draws back, unsure now that her teasing smiles has turned to refusal. “What’s come into you, woman?” he asks.

“I would have exchange,” she replies.

He gives a cocky smile, trying to regain composure. “Are you a whore then,” he says, “parting legs only to the glimmer of coins?”

“Coins hold no meaning to me here,” she replies coolly. His axe is again on the ground, dropped before he crawled beneath her blanket. She picks it up, has to use both hands to hold it. “This is what I want in return,” she says. “Steel, and the skill to wield it.”

He laughs. “You hold no interest in it. You said so yourself.”

“I said I hold no interest in the bow,” she corrects him mildly. “This is something else entirely.” The axe is too heavy in her grip, but the weight of it seems encouraging, daring her to go from enslaved to freed to warrior.

She does not know how to go about to seize her place in this new world with her hands, but she knows how to get what she wants through the spreading of her legs – the Romans taught her well. Mira, blinded fool that she is, has one thing right: position is a fragile and perilous thing when given through liaison with a man. They are, among other things, far to prone to dying.

“This is my price,” she tells him. “Agree or go sleep on cold ground.”

- 

“Spartacus said to give you this,” Nasir says, holding out an axe to her.

She has been practicing with Donar’s as often as she is able between helping digging out the tunnel and rationing food, but when Donar needs use of the it, all she has to carry is a small knife, better suited to the cutting of fruit than flesh.

“From where did it come?” she asks, making no move to take it.

“The wagon,” Nasir says, raising the cup of wine he is holding. “It was protected by mercenaries. Agron stripped them all of steel.”

“I thought proper weapons given only to those great of skill,” Chadara says. She suspects this to be Nasir’s way of apologising for the way they have drifted apart. Chadara does not blame him, not with the way his gladiator’s eyes rest on him. She would have embraced freedom just as easily if she had found such devotion there. It is an odd thing still, though, to see Nasir take what he wants in such a manner. The man before her is far removed from the obedient slave she knew beneath their Dominus’ roof. Bruised and scarred, but also smiling and loved.

“That is true,” Nasir says, his smile widening, and she takes it in hand, curls her fingers around the worn handle, holding it effortlessly. Her muscles have adjusted to its weight, but it stills feel sturdy and reliable in her grip, a thing made to split flesh and cleave bone.

She smiles back at Nasir. “I would have a cup of wine,” she says and marvels at the foreign feel on her tongue of expressing a wish rather than letting it remain suppressed.

- 

No matter how well she has learned to handle the axe in practice, it is a whole different task to use it in the midst of battle. She hears screams and does not know if they are Roman or friendly and the blood turns the ground to mud and the stone steps slippery.

There is gore on her hands and splattered across her chest and it makes her feel vaguely disgusted, being stained with another’s blood. The edge of her axe drips red with evidence of the damage it has inflicted and there is a body dead at her feet, the only one she is certain she actually delivered from this world.

It is a heady power, knowing that she has the power to take life, even as she is afraid that her stomach will rebel and throw up all that she has eaten. But there is no time for that. They leave the temple and escape up to the mountain, leaving the man-made walls for the protection of the wilderness.

 

The harsh cold of the mountain top has them migrating toward one another, huddling together to share warmth. She does not protest when Donar slips under he blanket again and throws his own over their shoulders.

“Fucking wind turns cock to ice,” he mutters.

“Then keep it away from me,” Chadara says and shudders as a gap in the blanket lets in a brush of chilly air.

“Cold would be better averted in warm embrace,” Donar says. “We still have our bargain.”

“Bargain struck was comfort exchanged for instruction,” Chadara says. “I no longer need such; I have mastered skill. The bargain is void.”

She has unfastened the axe from her hip, but it is not far from her. It never is. She runs her thumb along the edge, as she has the habit of doing, and Donar says no more and moves no closer.

It is not what she imagined freedom to be like when she yet dreamed of it, but it is enough. Despite the cold, the steel warms beneath her fingers.

- 

Killing, even in the chaos of battle, is a skill that can be learned, she discovers. When they have re-taken the temple she is drenched in blood and death is all around her and she recognizes that this is her life now.

She wipes her axe clean of gore and slips it into her belt with practiced motion.

“Here,” someone says and when she turns Saxa is holding out her two blades to her. “Yours. Many weapons are good thing.” New daggers of lethal beauty hang from Saxa’s own belt.

“Gratitude,” Chadara says, accepting them. They are small but sharp, able to inflict mortal damage if handled properly.

They ready themselves, clean weapons and rid the soldiers of all of worth they’re carrying, and Chadara, the slave girl who has gained freedom for herself, falls in line behind Saxa and the rest of the rebels as they leave the temple behind to wage war on Rome.


End file.
